My oldest is almost eight-years-old now, something that seems impossible to comprehend until I stand next to her and find her head reaching my shoulder.

O Amazon Child
You look just like your daddy
Or I'd think milkman?

My big girl has been taken to our local children's salon for her haircuts over the last few years, starting with the Mullet Incident up until this last start of the school year. I'll admit, I've been slacking on getting her hair cut on a regular basis. She's had it long and straight with no bangs for so long now, that even while I've known it needed to be trimmed, I just let it go.

Ah, a telling explanation for so much of my life.

After my last glorious hair appointment, my fantastic stylist suggested that I bring my shaggy-haired daughter to her for a cut and blow-out. I thought that if she can work magic on my shedding, flaking, greying locks, she could make my kid look great. More importantly, I thought that it would make my kid feel great.

I'm really getting into this pampering thing, which is great, because becoming high-maintenance and expensive to keep is one of my goals for my 30s.

I came home and announced to my daughter that she would be going to see my stylist for her next haircut, and she played it cool. So cool that I felt like grabbing her by the shoulder and telling her about the cookies in the lounge and the soundtrack that alternates between classical music and birdsong and all the trashy magazines that you can read and you know that is why I leave for my appointments 45 minutes early so that I can eat free cookies and read trashy magazines. I didn't think she'd understand until she lived it, though, and she's what, seven? So she doesn't understand. Or so I thought.

Her appointment fell on a Thursday afternoon. I help out in the school library that day, and I was surprised when my daughter presented me with a magazine about animals instead of her usual book at checkout. I didn't think too much of it, until we pulled up to the salon, and she pulled it out of her backpack.

"You can leave that out here," I ventured.

She circled her free hand next to her temple. "I'm getting my hair done. I need magazines."

Yes, baby girl. You do. You really, really do. She also wanted to know if she was going to get to sit under the beehive thing, which after quizzing her, meant the dryer chair. Sadly, it was not to be. THIS TIME. She was jealous (understandably) of my own recent dryer chair experience.

Heathen that I am, I brought all three kids into the lounge while we waited for my stylist to appear. We ate all the free cookies and dirtied several goblets. Then I sent my girl off to be shampooed and styled, and I took the other two houligans out to the car to save the tasteful rattan furniture from being gnawed on or stacked into forts. The receptionists gave me grateful smiles, and a handful of mints.

We passed a silly 45 minutes in the car, and then we ran back inside. My little girl was sitting there with a beautiful shoulder-length 'do, smiling at herself in the mirror while the stylist finished her blow-out. She was quiet until we crossed the threshold, only breaking her silence to thank our stylist. Once the door closed behind us, she pumped her fist in the air and tossed her head around saying "I love it I love it I love it I'm so preeeeeeettttttyyyyyy!"

Is she my daughter or what?